Dior Reimagines Couture For SS16

28.01.2016 | Fashion | BY: admin

Haute couture isn’t something that’s typically thought of as cool. Beautiful? Yes. Incredibly intricate, ostentatiously unique and mind-blowingly accomplished? Yes. Rebellious? Absolutely. But cool? No. Well, turns out, someone didn’t give the seven-strong team behind Christian Dior‘s spring summer 2016 collection that memo.

What was presented to a predictably packed audience in Paris’s Musée Rodin on Monday was as deliciously unkempt as the bookshelves lining the Seine. Despite the departure of Raf Simons – the undoubtedly refreshing and oft-lauded face of modernity at the historic French house – this was a collection of magnificently wearable, works of art.

Starchy silhouettes were compromised with flashes of bare shoulder – not in a calculated ‘cut-out’ manner – but as if the model had been gesticulating too wildly and somehow shrugged one side of her previously ladylike look off. Because of course Dior is ladylike. Even when it’s sending punkish sheer tops layered underneath prom dresses down the catwalk, the hair remains in a perfect side part, and the cheeks delicately rouged.

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Christian Dior Haute Couture SS16

In addition to this, hemlines of voluminous silk dresses cascaded messily from beneath embroidered, tobacco-hued wool coats that were just that bit too short, and the breast-plate of stiff tops exploded provocatively in a fanning wave of ruffles around models’ décolletage.

There is no denying that haute couture as a whole, has become infinitely more realistic in its approach to cut and day-to-day use in recent years. Even the handful of super rich clients who buy this stuff have some kind of ‘cost per wear’ gauge. But – that doesn’t mean it’s become boring. Far from it. In fact, the true inventiveness now is in the attitude conveyed by the most beautiful of clothes. As Christian Dior themselves echoed in their statement this week:

“The spontaneous, relaxed Parisienne of today is Couture by nature, down to the smallest details, but modern in spirit. It’s her attitude, her way of moving, her way of simply being.”

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